Six Months
by Kelleher
Summary: Decided to give myself a writing exercise&experiment based on this question: What would be in a journal Leia kept during the 6 months Han was in carbonite? This is going to be very on-the-fly so we'll see what kind of dreck comes out. And no, I'm not stopping work on "A Moment's Peace." Two separate things - and this one, like most writing exercises, will probably be AWFUL!:)
1. Chapter 1

07/032ABY

I don't keep journals. A record of my innermost thoughts, of my hidden feelings – too dangerous. Something that could be used against me as a member of the Rebellion, as a member of the Imperial Senate, as a Princess of Alderaan.

But what choice do I have now, when there is no one – sentient or droid – to whom I can speak about my current state? When anyone to whom I might normally turn has their own interests, curiosity or agenda regarding any potential romantic relationships I may have, and will certainly have more than a little to say about the appropriateness of the romantic relationship I do? did? have. For the first time in my life, I find myself desperately needing to speak to someone, to find someone who understands the depth of the pain I am in. I realize I should feel guilt at allowing my pain to be this deep over one man when billions died on Alderaan, and I do, but still…he found a part of me that I wasn't aware existed.

I need my mother, but the Empire made that impossible.

I need Luke, but I worry that he has feelings for me which I never shared, and while he would feel obliged to listen, and to be compassionate, I don't wish to cause him any unnecessary pain.

I need Han…and he's gone.

So here I am in front of my datapad, trying to clear my mind of those two words that seem to have taken up residence in my brain and synced themselves to my heartbeat: he's gone…he's gone…he's gone…

Trying to avoid Luke, who doesn't deserve to be avoided, because although he will not speak about what happened in his duel with Vader on Bespin last week, it is clear to me that Vader destroyed him as effectively as he destroyed me.

Trying to wrap my head around what I will say to the Alliance High Command when I go before them to inform them that until Han is found, my loyalties – and my time – will be divided.

Trying to understand why I heard Luke when he called out to me through the Force.

Mostly, trying not to regret all the time I wasted pretending not to feel what I was feeling, and trying not to see in every waking moment and in every vivid nightmare the look in Han's eyes in those last moments before the carbonite…

I love him.

He's gone.

And I will move every heaven and all the hells of Corellia to bring him back.


	2. Chapter 2

07/042ABY

(07/04/2ABY)

Today: 18 hours of lying in my bunk staring at the wall, trying not to wallow in painful memories of strong and protective arms around me…failing…but being too afraid of yet another night terror to allow myself to sleep. I have acquired a new group of nightmares to add to the old ones that troubled my sleep until…well, until that night on the Falcon a month ago when Han heard me wake crying out, carried me (mildly against my will) to his quarters, silently tucked me in, and proceeded to sleep on top of his blankets with his arms tightly around me. That was the last time I slept alone on the journey to Bespin.

No one would believe me if I told them that Han Solo lay in bed next to me night after night on the Falcon and didn't spend half his time trying to get on top of me. I think he understood my refusal: he was leaving, I reminded him, and I didn't want to open myself up to watching my first lover – he knew that much, that if anything happened, he would be my first – walk away to face a gangster out to kill him. He had believed that his best-case scenario with Jabba was five years of indentured servitude, and that was if he talked his way out of the death sentence, a death sentence which Han acknowledged Jabba had left in place even though Han had indeed paid back his original debt with the valuables we gave him on Yavin because, according to Jabba, the payment had taken too long to arrive and had thus tripled. Han believed that what Jabba actually demanded was personal humiliation along with payment of the debt. This is the creature we are now up against.

Han swore that he would do everything in his power to come back, to find me, but we both knew that the odds of both of us surviving five more years were slim. And because of that, and because of the rules of my upbringing, I found myself too conflicted to allow myself to be with him as I wanted to. That has become yet another regret among the growing pile.

So we lay there every night, Han grumbling more than once that he only put up with this sorry state of affairs because otherwise I'd wake up in my bunk screaming from a nightmare and interrupt his sleep cycle. He usually grumbled this while pulling me close to his chest and nuzzling my hair as I breathed in the combination of aftershave and phosphogrease, the scent I have associated with him for as long as I have known him, and which will now cause my heart to contract in a spasm of pain whenever I smell it on anyone in the Fleet.

But as I lay here today, clutching my pillow against my chest as a poor substitute for Han's embrace, I also realized, slowly, that no one was coming to look for me. For the last two years, had I failed to show up in the mess hall, in a briefing, on the bridge when I was expected, I would soon hear someone pounding on my door like a Toydarian who'd found a new junkyard. Another thing I took for granted – that someone, always the same someone – would be checking on me. I would see the relief on his face when I turned out to be okay, and he would then make up some story that he was looking for me because some payment promised by the Alliance had not been made or some mission we were being sent on was suicidal. I'd get angry. He'd get angry and storm off, leaving me even more angry that he made up a story in the first place, as we both knew that he was just making sure I was okay. But if he hadn't made up that story…if he had said he was checking to make sure I was ok, would I have even been nice? Likely not. But he came back every time. And those few times he found me truly sick, or otherwise out of sorts – as on the anniversary of the destruction of home – he was there. That was enough. And I took that for granted as well.

And I can't let myself keep thinking this way. I can't allow myself another day to wallow like this. I could get lost in these memories, reliving them over and over in order to make them seem present and real, instead of looking at the reality of what we face. The galaxy is of infinite size, and Han is somewhere out there in one of billions of starships. We don't even know if Fett intends to bring Han to Tatooine; we are relying on Lando's knowledge of Jabba and his insistence that Jabba will be too proud of Han's horrific state to be able to resist bringing his prize to Tatooine to show off what happens to someone who dares to defy him. But Jabba's syndicate – which I must learn more about – reaches across the Outer Rim and into the Outlier Planets. Then there is Nal Hutta, his lawless homeworld. He could, if he chooses, make Han nearly impossible to find.

There is another problem: I still do not trust Lando. He cannot remain the only one out there looking for Han.

Although I seem to have barely enough energy right now to put one foot in front of the other, I will manage to get up tomorrow, to go about my Alliance business, and to begin to do what I need to do to give this search for Han a chance at success. Everyone will have to believe that I am unbowed, that when I speak of my need to rescue Han, I speak as the Princess of Alderaan whose life he saved on the Death Star and I speak as a member of the Alliance High Command whose life Han saved on Hoth, leading directly to this great personal cost. As far as the Alliance and its members are concerned, I will have to be the Leia that infuriated Han to the point of making accusations of frigidity, the Leia who demands that her orders be followed. No one in the Alliance needs to know that as long as Han is trapped between life and death, a part of me will be as well, as I know that my feelings can and will be used against me. And perhaps, were I looking at another member of the High Command doing what I intend to do, I would use those feelings against them as well and hope that they crumbled for the good of the Alliance.


	3. Chapter 3

(07/05/2ABY)

Yoda. A name I never expected to hear again. My father, unlike many who formed the Alliance, always spoke of the last leader of the Jedi Council with reverence, but it was the reverence one would show to a long-gone hero. He told me that Yoda, his powers in the Force diminished due to the rising evil of the Empire, had disappeared during the waning days of the Republic. Many others feel the Jedi abandoned the Republic in its hour of greatest need. Now I cannot quite untangle the feelings I have after hearing that Luke has spent the last four months on a remote planet (he would not disclose its name) training in the Jedi way with Yoda and then left – disregarding Yoda's warnings against it – when he had a vision of Han and I suffering on Cloud City.

Dropping everything to run headlong into danger for his friends – that is the Luke I know.

Warning someone to remain in Jedi training when his friends were in danger – that is the Jedi Order I have heard spoken of with contempt by all but my father.

Perhaps is only my ego that is bruised by hearing a centuries old Jedi Master considered Han and I to be expendable. I had better become used to this insinuation, though, as I am certain many will soon confront me with some variant on the argument that Han Solo is expendable.

And I will give most of them the same answer that Luke found the only one he could accept: I do not abandon my friends when they are in trouble. I will not abandon him.

Of course, I have now seen the results of Luke's refusal to abandon us to Vader and the bounty hunter. Luke is, like me, changed by his experiences on Cloud City. When I encountered him in the mess hall this morning, he was quiet, drawn into himself and, like me, not eating much. We tried to choke down a few mealsubs and talked over a nursed cup of caf.

He told me of his training with Yoda. He told me of his vision of Ben Kenobi on Hoth. I know he was looking for some sign of confirmation from me, some acknowledgement that I believe him when he says he has had visions of Ben Kenobi. I wish I could give him what he is looking for. Instead I just nodded and kept my silence. Do I believe in the Force? I suppose. I know that Luke has access to some sort of powers that I don't understand. I know what I have seen, and what my father told me he had seen. But I also know what I have seen: sentient and human evil so monumental that it makes metaphysical evil, a dark side corrupting the Force and drawing certain individuals toward it, a secondary concern. Thought Vader is a Sith, Boba Fett is not. Grand Moff Tarkin was not. And Lando…his choice to collude with the Empire was his own, not a function of the dark side of the Force. Sentients can do great damage with nothing but themselves to blame for it.

But I let Luke continue. He told me, haltingly, of his defeat in his battle with Vader – a story I am sure he presented to me in redacted form. He told me that he now has questions for which he despairs of ever finding honest answers, and I know there are secrets he is keeping from me. But there are also secrets I am still keeping from him, as, sensing his pain, I couldn't unburden myself to him about my feelings for Han. I couldn't pile on, if indeed I am piling on, by telling him of our relationship. He must have some suspicion, given that Lando directed his promise about finding Han to me. And if he truly has Jedi insight, he already knows more than I can ever tell him.

If he has Jedi insights, he can reach out and touch my pain and feel how it is not the pain one feels at losing a friend. What I don't understand, though, is why, when I was sitting across a table from him this morning, I felt like I could actually enter into his pain as well, a pain that felt as raw and primal as my own. The sensation was very like the experience I had of hearing him call out to me on Bespin, and it makes me profoundly uncomfortable.

Luke, a Jedi. I am not sure how I feel about that.

Tomorrow I meet with Bic Anderez. I know what Han would say about that.

Wherever you are out there, Han, forgive me. I am doing this for you.


	4. Chapter 4

(07/06/2ABY)

Well, now I know why he felt the way he did about Bic Anderez. I thought it was a personal gripe, some dispute arising out of their past encounters in the part of Han's life he doesn't tell me too much about except to say, "I'm really good at what I have to do" and to insist that far too few in the Alliance understand that a lot of people in this galaxy have never had the luxury of thinking about whether they like what they have to do in order to survive.

Let's just say that Bic is likely not one of those people. She's pleased as could be with her status as an outlaw information trader, and is only now allied with the Rebellion due to information General Dodonna came across that was used to blackmail her into becoming a Rebel ally. Simply, we know the location of all of her treasure troves. She could betray us, but the moment she does, her hidden treasures will be blown sky-high, as the hiding places have been mined.

This female Deshongi is a true pirate, hidden treasure and all, and given the way we came to be the beneficiaries of her services, I'm reminded again that war is a dirty business.

Bic was unwilling to help me at first, pondering whether what I asked of her was truly Alliance business or just a human female looking to save her lost lover. She managed to take me by surprise with that, and while I was back on my heels, she opened her mouth in that vaguely threatening point-toothed Deshongi grin and asked if it were possible that I was truly unaware that the hottest betting on Echo Base revolved around how long it would take Captain Solo to bed me.

I must have flinched, and I know I flushed – I know better at this point than to pretend that people living at risk of a violent death every day are at least mildly respectful, but what prompted my reaction was the unbidden fear that Han himself may have been a part of that betting, although there was no reason for him to be even mildly respectful given the way I treated him after Ord Mantell.

Bic saw my "tell," as Han would call it, as a moment to press her advantage, so she agreed that she would do what I was asking provided that Mon Mothma herself authorized it. Which will never happen. Mon will never agree to consider Bic's information trading in the underworld regarding bounty hunters and Hutt gangsters to be Alliance business, as the Hutts stay as far from the Empire as we do.

Bic then tried to drive a hard bargain. The credits I could offer safely were of no interest to her. Likely no amount of credits would have been of interest to her, as she collects valuable things, not credits. So now the Chalcedony bracelet given to me by my mother belongs to Bic Anderez, and I have an ear to the ground in the underworld about what Jabba intends to do to Han, which is needed information. Even if Fett does the easiest thing and brings Han to Jabba's Palace, we're unlikely to be able to walk in and buy Han's freedom.

As I turned to leave Bic threw in one further piece of information – she must have liked my bracelet. Clearly, she keeps an ear to the ground about the Alliance as well, which should disturb me more than it does, but that is a problem for another time. For now, she told me that Zev Darnik's black eye and split lip did not come from an angry Tauntaun, but from a certain Corellian who dropped him with one punch, telling him to have a little respect, after Zev told him about the bet and joked that he should get a move on as there were credits on the line.

Bic must have seen my relief and, perhaps, my gratitude to Han for what he did, so she dismissed me with this parting shot:

"Your friend has a hard head and a heart that's way too soft. Always was his worst flaw. Someday it's going to get him dead."

Instead of walking out as I should have, I couldn't resist snapping back that it was no flaw. I should have known she'd insist on the last word:

"You think he'd be in the mess he's in now if it weren't for his soft heart? He should have kissed you and the Rebellion goodbye and paid off his debts long ago."

Unsurprisingly, that comment kept me tossing and turning for most of the night.


	5. Chapter 5

(07/07/2ABY)

I found Luke by his X-Wing today. For the briefest moment, I believed he had decided to leave early on his search for Han, and I felt something vaguely like hope. It turned out to be a brief scouting mission for the Rogues; while Wedge Antilles seems to have bought Luke's shaky story about why he didn't rendezvous with the fleet sooner (and yes, I would be conflicted about Luke going AWOL but as I know we may both need to do it shortly, I have no moral high ground here), he didn't buy it enough not to send Luke on scouting missions.

Luke remains quiet and distant, going about his duties silently, with his mind elsewhere. I do the same; today I spent most of the day recording the status of bacta supplies throughout the fleet.

I will soon have my hands full, though. I received word of a meeting of the Alliance High Command on Hrkik five days from now. At that meeting, I will have to present my case for being given resources to search for Han, as well as telling the other members of High Command that I intend to go on that search. Part of me quails at the thought, as Mon and Jan Dodonna have very specific ideas about my role in the Alliance: figurehead, reminder of what has been lost to the Empire, and financier, since I now, at least nominally, hold the purse strings to the fortune my father gave to the Rebellion. It has been rapidly depleted, I know, and by virtue of that depletion, some in the Alliance – Dodonna included, but not to my knowledge Mon – also consider me a bargaining chip.

That information came to me while on Hoth, courtesy of Carlist Rieekan, who felt I should know what he heard. Apparently, a lot of royal houses in the galaxy would be interested in paying handsomely for a Queen consort from the House Organa. Odd that I am considered to be heir of an ancient royal house when as an adoptee, my status was based on the fact that I would someday rule a planet or, at the very least, be married away from Alderaan with a substantial dowry courtesy of the Alderaanian government. Odder still, that when there is no longer a House Organa or an Alderaanian government, only me and an asteroid field swirling around a star, my status to some as a unique bauble for their world remains. Perhaps Bic Anderez and the royal houses of the galaxy have much in common.

I am wondering, however, if I need to approach Carlist in order to obtain an ally in this meeting. I do not know where Carlist would come down if I told him everything, but I do know that he and Han became good Sabacc buddies on Echo base. Rieekan developed a deep respect for Han, deep enough that he told me once – in a perfectly legitimate demand for a General-in-Command at Echo Base but somewhat unusual given that he is too an Alderaanian and thus considers himself to rank below me – that the very best thing I could do was to re-evaluate Han Solo.

I took it as an order to write a new personnel report to replace the skeptical one that I had submitted while still on Yavin. Acknowledging that Rieekan was correct – although it meant risking opening myself to my carefully walled-off feelings about Han in a way that threatened to send me to his quarters on the Falcon full of apology and desire – I wrote the report.

When I handed Carlist the datapad with my new report, he looked at me, confused, and then quietly said, before turning back to whatever pressing problem was at hand:

"No, Leleia, that's not what I meant."

I have not heard Carlist use that nickname for me since my early childhood. Nor has he used it since that day.

Yes, Carlist could be a much-needed ally if I can find him before the meeting convenes –he is currently with espionage command on Tandis-II – and bare my soul.

Which is obviously not my greatest strength.

 **Sorry for not thanking reviewers lately - the site is telling me there are new reviews, but it is not letting me see them! Anyone have a solve for that? Or is it just a glitch? Message me if you know!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Had to stop for a while to let the sadness about the passing of Carrie Fisher wash over me. What a loss - too young, too vibrant, too smart, too soon. RIP Carrie or, more appropriate, perhaps, to Carrie Fisher's personality, may you be raising a glass in heaven with Dorothy Parker and Nora Ephron right about now.**

(07/09/2ABY)

They had me on command duty on the bridge all day yesterday. I am not sure whether that was a favor from General Flys, who knew that we were awaiting a message from Lando, or simply a scheduling fluke in my favor.

In any event, the message never arrived. Not yesterday, nor today.

I am attempting to give it another twelve hours before I completely lose my grip and give into hysteria, but my brain is now playing out every possible bad outcome, from Lando killing Chewie and disappearing into the ether with the Falcon, to Chewie killing Lando after finding that Lando was plotting behind his back, to Boba Fett finding them the way he found us and blowing the Falcon out of the sky, to Chewie and Lando finding that Jabba had already killed Han and not wanting to tell me via transmission.

I know I need to give them more time – anything could have delayed them, from a solar storm to the need to avoid an Imperial patrol to the need to lay low for a day on Tatooine before heading off to a place where a transmission was possible. But I can still feel a scream making its way up from the bottom of my throat, and eventually it will escape, because I learned today that another possible problem is brewing: a medic I vaguely know, named Adria Pier, asked me if I could stop in at the medcenter soon to discuss some information Too-Onebee wants to share with me about human hibernation.

I don't imagine this is good news. This - this waiting, this stream of bad or no news – is becoming unbearable.


End file.
